Readers' comments

Oh! My! Goodness! We're going to compare this crash, which by any close observation was unique and historic to mild set-backs that have occurred in the past. That alone boggles the mind. This outranks the deflationary Depression of the past in America. We are likely to have massive followup occurrences not previously imagined. If our president is re-elected, we could see a State of Emergency which would be called to set aside Congress to resolve the "Fiscal Cliff" and resolve itself into a Dictatorial Rule not seen in America before! Or, we could see a complete meltdown of the dollar regardless of the election!

You only need to control the handful few compiling the data to manipulate it. Ask yourself three things:
1) increase in production and manufacture from what demand?
2) what has changed in environment or policy in the last 6 months?
3) Why are the improvements not reflected in domestic earnings report?

You only need to control the handful few compiling the data to manipulate it. Ask yourself three things:
1) increase in production and manufacture from what demand?
2) what has changed in environment or policy in the last 6 months?
3) Why are the improvements not reflected in domestic earnings report?

Its called inflation. That's when they minimize the inflation rate to make everyone believe that there is real growth. Well, inflation is running at about 5% or more for the items that most people buy like food, clothing, energy, tools, etc. All this while wages are stagnant and unemployment remains at incredibly high levels because the current figures do not count those not looking for work.

I agree with your direction, just a note> America - Hamburger in Fall of 2008 was $1.29 lb Now - $2.75. Gas - $1.80 Now $3.50, Going to a medical quick clinic $50. Now $125. Items necessary for real life are far above 5%. Try 25% per year! Or 100% total increase to date.

The excesses were caused by wanton printing. Just as printing the global housing Minsky led to a few jobs building empty McMansions, current wanton printing is leading to a few few jobs building new Keynesian pyramids.

The result will be yet another future catastrophe, as loans extended to build Keynesian pyramids cannot be repaid. Over $1 trillion in McMansion loans has already been defaulted on, just in the US. Defaults in Europe have just begun.

the olmpic ticket sales booked in Q3 of 2012 using the SNA princples would this be consistant with what normally happens for olmpic ticket sales? Just some have said this as if conspiracey?
A slight mis frame that i supose the question would be would this be consistant with how you would expect the UK to treat the ticket sales.

Especially since it marks the first time in living memory that the Federal government has all worked together to achieve something so remarkable. At least, according to the far right view of the Federal government.

That's always the biggest problem with conspiracy theories: they assume a level of competence rarely if ever seen anywhere else in human experience. And with never a leak from all the hordes involved in it. Remarkable.

Seriously, Economart, let's lay aside the epithets and address the issue. The exercise may not change your mind, but hear me through before judging. Lets put the scientific part in perspective, then go over the political baggage you're caught up in. BTW- Some skepticism of political baggage is warranted, but not extremes there-of. I am not actually a "leftist", but a real skeptic of the prevailing economic orthodoxy, whether of Marxists or Capitalist "globalizers". Much of it is just an excuse to indulge in manipulation of people for someone else's aggrandizement.
The expression "climate change" is the concensus scientific term from climatologists to describe longterm changes in global weather patterns. Its been called that since at least the 1970s in peer-reviewed journals. This is distinct from local weather events experienced by laymen called "the weather". That global weather patterns have changed in the past is undeniable from the geologic record that document extremes of global freezing ("Ice Ages") vs. global hot ("Carboniferous"). This came into focus more systematically for the recent geological past after the CLIMAP project started taking worldwide ocean sediment cores in the late 1970s. Climate change is a global change in the balance of cold vs. heat that drives the weather. Global means it can be a bit colder in some areas and a bit hotter in others, but the MEAN temp trends up or down. There is little debate that orbital variations and solar output ultimately drive longterm changes, but there is difference of opinion over the how the intensity and speed of change is impacted by human activity. The concensus now is that human activity DOES impact climate change, but HOW MUCH is still debated.
I think the need to distinguish a climate regime from weather (and even short to intermediate term weather trends)has become necessary in public debates primarily because people confuse the two and identified phenomena. Global warming is one example; Global Dimming is another. Both are global weather phenomenon but are NOT synonomous with climate change of themselves. Global warming is a trend that influences change due to the build-up of heat from increasing GHGs (human activity=CO2, CFCs/HFCs, etc.; thawing arctic permafrost=methan), while Global dimming is a suggested phenomenon that partially counteracts this effect due to particulates reflecting sunlight back into space (particulates from northern hemisphere industrial activity).
Secondary to this climate change is the impact on biological systems, which is what most people associate with changes in weather patterns. The alarm for governments (and large industry groups such as insurers-reinsurers) is that this change in weather patterns can mean less predictable outcomes for extreme weather events and basic subsistence practices such as agriculture, water supplies, etc.
Its this last part that has created the big public hornswoggle. The environmental activists think we have to quickly human reduce GHG emissions to stop, slow, or reverse global warming trends, what-ever the costs. The "Green" consumer types think its just a matter of making a consumer choice and buy "offsets". Both are extremes. And then there are the Deniers, who take the other extreme because they tend to oppose the state-sanctioned changes allegedly mandated by the other extreme. But the facts and what to do about it aren't that simple. Even IF we accept that human GHG emissions effect this change, their effects kick in for long after they were emitted (CO2, methane, CFCs/HFCsk= xxx to xxxxxx years), and we are going to have to live through them. So, its okay to be skeptical about the systematic changes to be made regarding climate changes for cost/benefit reasons. Maybe the money expended in some grandiose venture that only further burdens the poor or working poor (and thus costs everyone more in safety net provision) could be better spent on adapting how we live (agriculture, location, water management systems, etc.)to mitigate the predictable changes resulting from changing weather patterns. For example, rainfall in arable mass agriculture regions could be changes in both seasonality and latitudinally, making traditional mono-cropping or crop succession unfeasible. So, Americans could use the USDA for example, to educate farmers to change their crops or crop successions to adapt and minimize yield loss. Or, for large factory farm producers, change the crop insurance or subsidy system to encourage similar changes. I'm going to avoid discussion of energy policy and emissions because that is another vast topic all its own.
The point is that all of us, what-ever the political persuasion, still have to eat, get water, and live somehow predictably amidst a rapidly changing world. Its a pragmatic venture, or ought to be, and not a ideological one.

I am going to have to repeat the question. It was once called Anthropogenic or Man-Made Global Warming, or just plain Global Warming by near every wretched climate scientist, who hatched and encouraged this gigantic fraud, going back several decades within and without peer reviewed journals. Now it is called Climate Change. Why the change?

Is that clear enough for you, or would you like me to repeat the question another 1000 times before I may expect an answer?

Okay, I see my time was wasted since you want conspiracy theory as opposed to the facts. My mistake. Regarding anthropogenic climate change, go back and reread what I wrote earlier. It was quite clear. And, yes, methane (CH4) is very much a greenhouse gas with about 20 times the potency of carbon dioxide. Now I understand why another geologist said not to argue with nut cases. Please go back to reading conspiracy tracts that say Hitler died of old age farming in Alabama, USA or something. I will disturb your universe of one no more.

Your explanation gives us a fabrication in that it was supposedly always known as Climate Change.

Listen, dope, the internet isn't a fiction. It's real. And it supplies plenty of information about what these AGW nuts have been saying for decades. And they all pretty much called it AGW or Global Warming up until just a few short years ago.

There's only one disturbed and arrogantly, stupid fellow here. And its not the guy who knows Methane's IR spectrum.

In light of the near collapse of GE Capital back in 2008, and the long term perfomance of GE's stock price (currently at the level of January 1998), perhaps Welch's legacy -- relative to his compensation -- needs to be re-evaluated.

Either he was a genius and Immelt a dunce, or some of that relative performance was simply a function of an increase and decrease in economy-wide leverage, a stock market boom and bust.

Welch got paid richly, in part, for what he did not do. Immelt has continued to get paid richly, despite not even creating temporary false shareholder value. I wouldn't say neither did a good job and created value. But neither created enough value, aside from the effect of stock market bubbles, to justify the high level of executive pay.

I think it's become clear that GE Capital massaged its earnings specifically to report the continuous stream of increasing earnings that Welch made his money and has mark on. It was faked. There is clear evidence of that, not merely blogging speculation: GE figured out its needs and marked up their financial reports to meet them.

This may influence Welch's response: he was CEO and the CEO ran that conspiracy so he would perhaps naturally assume the US CEO would run a similar conspiracy. He would miss, of course, that Obama isn't US CEO, that the BLS doesn't report to him in the way GE's finance and treasury did to Welch, etc.

So of course, Welch wants a CEO President. Been there, done that, and we saw what happened: maxed the credit cards with two wars, pillaged the treasury and didn't repay with deliberately diminished revenues. US needs a return of "One Nation" Tories instead of the fake ones they have now.

And seriously, he's SO unilateral in his decisions. During the debt ceiling negotiations, he decided to grow a year older despite staunch Republican opposition: they weren't ready to gift the President a free-falling economy for his birthday.